I'm home!

I just arrived in Atlanta. I'm not going to write again until I'm back on the farm in January. But stay tuned for a tale about two slugs in love...true story.

Happy Holidays!

Dancing

The weekend before last I attended a house concert in the marvelous attic of an old home in the heart of Victoria. It is an interesting thing going to an event where you know pretty much no one. (I don't count meeting someone once as knowing them). Now, I'm definitely a social person and I love love love meeting new people and finding myself in weird situations. Which is I why I was absolutely thrilled when I sat next to Tittilating Todd (this is the adjective he chose when I asked him to describe himself with a word that started with T).

I sat down in the empty seat next to him and without looking at me he said "I've seen you before." "Mmmmm...." I think I said (insert any intonation of voice here as they probably all fit the situation.) "At a concert at Alex Goolden Hall" he added, continuing to stare straight ahead. And without flinching, he slyly reached into his pocket and handed me a 2x2 inch square of paper. It was an invitation to a Disco, Funk, Soul dance party!!!! I am sure in that moment I totally ruined the covertness of the situation when I expressed my utter excitement of being invited to a dance party!!!!

So this past weekend it snowed! Yup. We got two inches of beautiful white snow on the farm. But there was no snow high enough to keep me from attending the mysterious dance party. Honestly, it was about time I moved my rockin moves outside of the trailer. So I braved the roads (sorry mama) and drove really really slowly until I got to the highway.

It was totally worth the slow drive because I went absolutely CRAZY!!!! Oh my goodness...I danced and danced for hours and hours...just thinking about it makes my face beam.

For me, dancing is like the ultimate moment of living a rich life. I've told many of you this before...I want to die dancing. That's right. If any of you happen to be around me when I'm dying, I need you to get me up dancing...so that I go mid twirl. Ha! Then one of you can write about it in Chicken Soup for the Dancing Soul.

Time to leave the library now and have my own dance party in the trailer.

Pigs

I think I may have mentioned that we got four baby pigs earlier this
month. Well, they aren't babies anymore...and they just keep getting
bigger and bigger. The weekend before last, Marika was out of town.
This meant I had to take over the pig and morning chickens duties.

Wow.

That's all I have to say. Feeding 52 hungry animals (48 of them with
sharp beaks) is a lot to handle at 7 o'clock in the morning. My first morning feeding the chickens did not go too smoothly. I just couldn't attach the feed tray to the thing it hangs from fast enough...so they were all over it and me. I was totally sweating by the time I left the coop.

Now compared to the chickens, the pigs are a piece of cake. The only discomfort with the pigs is that they bite a my gum boots. I'm worried about what they'll bite at when their bigger. My uncle reassures me that they only do this when they are young...it is
their natural reaction to get the milk to come. Sorry piggies! Ain't
gonna get no milk out of me! It's pretty funny to watch them eat
because they are so mean to each other! Pushing each other out of the way...and standing in the feed tray. Such pigs!

When I went out on Friday night it was very strange to have the thought "Well, I can't stay out too late cause I've got to feed the pigs and chickens in the morning." Never in my wildest dreams did I foresee a thought like this entering my mind in this lifetime. Ha!

I'm still having photos issues with the farm computer...but you can check out pictures of the pigs on my flikr account.

Slug Battle

The caterpillars and slugs are devouring my lettuce plants. Now, I have the utmost respect for my fellow vegetarians...but I have very low tolerance for those who invite themselves over for dinner and then defecate on the leftovers. How crass!

Several weeks ago I transplanted an entire bed of lettuce in my greenhouse...and when I went to check them out a couple days later there were entire sections totally missing! THEY ATE THEM ALL!
Those merciless little creatures. So with Mary's advice I constructed the ultimate gauntlet. I dug a trench in the entrance of the greenhouse and filled it with rocks, ashes, and broken egg shells. Nice caustic materials on tender flesh. I transplanted onions in the newly emptied pockets, and sprinkled ashes around all the beds.

One morning Mary handed me a "slug kit" she put together. The contents of the white bucket contained two grapefruit peels, two avocado peels, two cat food containers, and a half full can of beer. I was told to put the avocado and grapefruit peels face down on the soil because the slugs like to crawl in a hang out. The cat food cans I buried in the soil and filled them with beer. A nice alcoholic swimming pool for the critters to have an after dinner drink and die.

Last week I did my first "night patrol." This involves walking through the greenhouse with a headlamp scouting out slugs and cutworms. The first night I attempted this it was too early and I only found 18 slugs in motion (slow motion) not having quite reached their feasts. But I plucked them right out of their delightful pilgrimage to Mecca and put them in a jar to be saved for the chicken's breakfast. The following night it was far too cold and I only found 1 slug. But tonight, the conditions should be just right. There are enough clouds in the sky for it not to be too cold for slug flesh and I plan to make my prowl at just the right hour of the night.

Oh Canada!

It's official. I am a Canadian.

Some of you may not know that I'm a duel citizen cause my pops was born in Canada. So today I received my Canadian liscence and now I can drive legally! I am also set up on the BC Healthcare (which is not totally free like the movie Sicko leads you to believe.) I currently pay $54 a month and after 12 months of being a resident I can apply for premium assistance (since I'm poor) and get part of the cost subsidized. Cool huh? The health plan covers a wide range of things...except dental. You can get a percentage of the cost of a massage reimbursed, but you can't get your teeth cleaned...unless you have extended coverage through your job or something.

I also have a library card and a L.I.F.E pass to the Sooke recreation center. Again, because I am poor I can use the facilities for free! I can go swim, ice skate, lift weights (cough), and even join the jazzercise and water aerobics classes for free! Ain't gonna be no obesity issues here.

According to my grandma, I even sound Canadian. Apparently, I raise the ends of my sentences nOW. But I haven't reached the point yet of saying "Eh" (is that how you even spell it?) And I've noticed that the younger generation here says "hey" instead of "eh" - "That was a pretty cool concert, hEY?"

I will never stop using the word "y'all" though. I mean, it makes perfect sense! There is no 2nd person plural in the English language. Genius.

Alright yall. I'm aboot to go oot so I'll talk to yall later, hEY?

Knitting

This evening I had my first knitting session with Lesley, a wonderful British woman who lives here in Sooke with her husband Gordy. Lesley sells her felted hats and bags around town and is very talented with her work. And lucky me, she is going to teach me how to make a felted hat.

Let me just say that Lesley and Gordy are the cutest and sweetest people ever! I believe they are both retired...I'm not sure what their professions were, but Gordy carves beautiful wooden sculptures and is a musician in disguise. One minute he was playing a little diddy on a wooden flute and the next minute he was playing the guitar and singing songs about the Georgia pines (making me nice and homesick for my Piedmont trees...oh man, I have so much to say about the feeling of knowing what trees surround you and what a sense of place that evokes...but that would be a major digression.) He even gave me a penny whistle so that when I'm alone in my trailer I can practice becoming a grand penny whistle musician.

Lesley was very excited to have me come knit with her...apparently she's been waiting her whole life to find someone to knit with! So we drank tea and knitted while watching the "log" on TV. Yes, that's right a fireplace on TV. HA! I didn't know that actually happened in real life. Lesley says that when there is nothing good on the telly they just turn it to the "log" - channel 50. Is that not awesome?! At times, there was even a hand that reached in and probed the indestructible log that hadn't changed shape in two hours. All the while, Gordy talked about one thing or the other...comments like "I bet a lot of kids are nicknamed 'peanut' down there in Georgia." And then Lesley would roll her eyes and tell him to shush! "She's counting her stitches!" she'd say in her British accent. "Shush is my middle name around here" Gordy would reply. The whole time I was internally beaming with how cute the two of them were.

When it was time for me to go they had put together a bag full of fresh baked cookies and banana bread (which according to Lesley I need some "marge" to put on it)...along with a felted "knitting" bag made by Lesley, my penny whistle, and a bunch of tea light candles...cause Gordy has a ton..."a bag of 100 for only $5."

All I have to say is that I smiled the entire way home. There are some damn beautiful people in this world.

On an entirely different and not as beautiful note - I am going to start adding my rat count to the bottom of each entry along with the number of times I've been pecked by chickens.

Rat count: 2 and a mouse
Chicken pecks: 5 (maybe this means I look tasty) - and one of those five drew blood.

Eggs

I suffer from alektorophobia. "Alektorophobia is an abnormal fear of chickens which may be a result of the fear of feathers, of winged creatures, or of flying animals or birds. Such fears may also include eggs and live or dead chickens. A few reasons include fears of being pecked, swooped upon, and because they roost above eye level or that they eat food from the ground or manure piles which apparently may contaminate the bird. Such fears usually involve relative closeness to live chickens, but usually don't include cooked chickens."

Those of you who have known me for a significant part of my life have been aware of my perpetual fear of eggs - aka "hen fruit" (according to thesauraus.com). This disease has plagued me for years. I even remember hiding a piece of hard-boiled egg from a preschool snack in with the basket of building blocks. My mother tried for years to disguise them with cheese but I never failed to sniff out that proteinaceous stench. Later on in life, my Costa Rican host mother thought I wasn't worldly enough to know that French toast was drenched in the stuff..."No hay huevos" she said as she handed me my plate.

I am starting to understand that my apprenticeship here at ALM farm is really chicken/egg boot camp in disguise. Today, while cleaning off the pooh streaked eggs I broke two of them. One cracked in my hand and the other fell on the floor. I believe I yelled both times and did the squeamish dance. I can only imagine what I must have looked like trying to scoop the egg off the floor with a spatula - yeah, I know...what was I thinking. There is just something about that smell...that flat fishy smell that can't hide the sticky, slimy goo it belongs to. All I have to say is thank you, thank you mama, for your wise words that have stuck with me all these years - "You can always wash your hands." This has become my mantra.

The thing I really don't understand though is why I have to suffer this alone? How do you all do it? Do your intestines really not flip when observing all the forms and textures an egg can take on? From cool, sticky goo, to sweaty, quivering jello, to sebaceous rubber, to that really weird pastiness of hard-boiled? I've watched you all devour these things my whole life and I still to this day do not get it.

Sigh.

Amazing how my blog reflects more on my albumenal fears than my verdurous passions (yeah...that was some total thesaurus work there).

I'll continue to keep you all updated on my progress.